Trust Nobody

Lesson Focus / Essential Question:

• Propaganda in Fahrenheit 451

Next Gen Common Core Standards:

• 9-10R8: Delineate and evaluate an argument and specific claims in a text, assessing the validity or fallacy of key statements by examining whether the supporting evidence is relevant and sufficient.

• 9-10R9: Choose and develop criteria in order to evaluate the quality of texts. Make connections to other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, and personal experiences.

Objectives:

• I can question the teacher when they tell me something that seems implausible.

• I can apply the CRAAP method to assess claims, especially apparently bizarre ones.

Materials to prepare:

• Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

  • Text pp140-143

  • Montag is ‘killed’ on tv

  • Audiobook - cut and edited excerpt

• “You Won’t Believe What Obama Says in This Video”

  • (and really you shouldn’t believe, because he doesn’t)

  • See below

Anticipatory set:

• Tell the students:

  • "So I was reading some recent scientific literature, and learned something that astounded me. Were you aware that green and hot pink are actually the same color?"

    • "You know that colored light is a spectrum, from red to violet. Red is just one wavelength of light, violet is just another, at opposite ends of the spectrum."

      • Display your choice of color spectrum illustration

    • "Magenta, hot pink, doesn’t even actually exist. When you twist the light spectrum from a line into a circle, putting red next to violet, the brain thinks there needs to be something in between, so it invents magenta."

      • Display your choice of color wheel illustration 

    • "But what it invented to be magenta turns out, when you do neuroscience at it, use like an MRI or CAT scan or whatever, to actually be a shade of green, probably because it's across the wheel from where magenta should be."

  • ...When students begin to express doubt:

    • (If they don't, you can prompt them with "raise your hand if you don't believe what I'm saying about magenta and green".)

  • "Use the CRAAP method to determine credibility of a source! You can use this on everything you encounter that tries to tell you something." As a whole class:

    • Currency: I’m telling this to you today, so it is current, which is good.

    • Relevance: I’m telling you physics, neuroscience, and color theory, in an English classroom, which is is a plausible thing that can happen, but leans bad.

    • Authority: I’m a teacher, which is good; but none of my degrees are in physics, neuroscience, or art theory, which is bad.

    • Accuracy: I did not cite any specific sources for you to verify, which is very bad.

    • Purpose: It seems like I’m teaching/informing, which is good.

  • "So I, as a source here, am about half good and half bad -- which makes me not a very credible source, when CRAAPing, you want to be as close as possible to 100% good."

  • Ultimately: you can’t just believe what people tell you. You have to express your skepticism glands sometimes.

Procedures for Instruction:

• Play/read Fahrenheit 451 excerpt

  • Interrupt periodically for extra elucidation

Closure:

• In the book, they just blurred “Montag”’s face a little. If they did this today they’d use what’s called a “deepfake”

  • Play “You Won’t Believe What Obama Says in This Video”

  • Explain deepfakes, how they’re created using AI, how Disney has been using it to paste old actors’ faces for young versions of their characters (Peter Cushing posthumously as Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One, old Mark Hammill as young Luke Skywalker on The Mandalorian, old Harrison Ford as young Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny)